Internet companies no fan of new bill

Many of the world’s largest Internet companies say the Canadian government’s cyberbullying bill will force them to be more secretive.

The companies, under the banner of the Internet Association, say C-13 contains gag orders that will prevent them from telling their customers when government collects their data.

“We do not believe that promoting public safety requires the government to lower its standard for gaining access to people’s private communications,” said association president Michael Beckerman.

“Indeed, public trust requires that we hold ourselves and public officials to high standards in this important area.”

The group’s members include Facebook, eBay, Reddit, Twitter, Google, Netflix and 30 other major online companies.

They say they want more transparency about government asking them for information. Beckerman said the members want to publish disclosure requests in aggregate form but also inform the individual customers when appropriate.

One C-13 section would allow a judge to place a gag order on the mere existence of a production order.

“Companies should be able to tell people when their information is being collected by the government,” said Beckerman.

“We are concerned that language in C-13 moves us in the opposite direction.”

He was appearing before the House of Commons justice committee Thursday. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association also said the bill does not strike the right balance and is an invasion of privacy.

But this view was not unanimous.

Joseph Wamback of the Canadian Crime Victim Foundation insisted C-13 contains no violation of personal privacy. He also took shots at the bill’s critics.

“I believe that the outcry surrounding these ‘invasions of our privacy’ are by those who have not read or understood the provisions in C-13, or they are being intellectually dishonest,” Wamback said.

After weeks of hearings, the sides for and against the bill have taken shape.

Opponents include privacy advocates, lawyer groups such as the Canadian Bar Association and the Internet industry itself. In favour of it are some but not all victim advocates and advocacy groups, as well as police.

Also Thursday, Rogers revealed it received nearly 175,000 data requests from police last year. Of those, over 74,000 involved a warrant. Rogers said that 10,000 warrantless disclosures were in emergency “life-threatening situations” or cases of child sexual exploitation emergencies.

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